Jennifer Heins says of her work, "My work often focuses on the intrigue found in decrepit, dirty places; broken glass, rusty cars, graffiti covered walls.

I enjoy finding the contrast between the intent of something’s creation and how nature and time have altered it. It is important to acknowledge the power behind these alterations. Without humans the world marches on. My work makes use mostly of urban environments and landscapes."

Jennifer Heins is an amateur photographer in her third year of serious pursuit of photographic art. Her knowledge stems from her education in film and cinematography. She uses both digital and analogue mediums, specializing in 35mm film. In January 2017 she was ShootFilm UK’s artist of the week.

Jill Grabowski says of her work, "These three images are taken from Palimpsest I, my series exploring how humans impact the natural world in their attempt to mold and shape the geographical environment to suit their needs.

The results may often be imposing, but nature's original forms are never totally suppressed; the process of modification is never permanent.

We impose our identity onto nature, but nature re-asserts itself in a constant reminder of its primacy and permanence.

Taking the literary example of the palimpsest as a metaphor for this process, I highlight this uneasy relationship of creation, erasure, superimposition, and resurgence.

Aware that images of nature are incapable of being divorced from human subjectivity, I shifted from a desire to show the human body in nature, instead concentrating on the minute, often ignored details of the outdoors, so minimized and subjugated by the human hand, in an effort to show nature as once again heroic in stature, as eternal.

Focusing closely on the texture of a group of weathered wood pylons, I show how they retain their original attributes despite human interference, mutilation, and neglect."

Born and raised in Orange County, California, Jill showed an early interest in drawing, and after finding old Instamatic and Super8 cameras in her grandparents' apartment, she took up photography.

After twelve years in parochial schools, she headed north to attend UC Santa Cruz (BA, Art History). Her thematic interests inspired research on diverse topics, including art as social protest, feminist performance art, and theories of spectatorship in photography and film. The unique character of Santa Cruz had a permanent effect on her work; her art continues to reflect a deep connection to nature, with an eye keenly fixed on California's vanishing landscapes.

While a Trustee Scholar at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she presented papers on Chicano art, body art, and, most notably, autobiographical comic books created by women. After earning her MA in Modern Art History, Theory, and Criticism, she returned to Orange County, where she teaches English literature and art history.

After a years-long hiatus from art-making, Jill works to expand her technical knowledge and improve her photography. She is currently working on projects in the Costa Mesa area, where she has lived since 2013.

Julie Van der Wekken says of her work, "There are certain aesthetics that draw me in when photographing, shadows and reflections being two of my favorites currently.

I think of reflections as the yang (bright) of light and the shadows as the yin (dark). The former lets light shine through and the latter blocks it.

The lines are blurred sometimes when a reflection is also a shadow and vice versa. As it is with life, most things aren’t what they seem, and if they are they can quickly change. The truth always changes, things are fluid, just like the light when taking photographs."

Van de Wekken continues, " I live in the high desert of Salt Lake City, Utah with my husband, 2 sons, 2 cats, 4 chickens and 1 enormous garden.

I grew up in a suburb right outside of Salt Lake and have lived in Utah my entire life. I love the extreme range of beauty that Utah has to offer with the mountains a 15 minute drive from my house and the desert only 2 hours.

I graduated from Salt Lake Community College in 2001 with an AAS Degree specializing in Visual Art & Design/Photography and have made photography a serious hobby every since.

IN THE EARLY MORNING by Karen KlinedinstHonorable Mention(Click here for larger view)

LATE WINTER THE BEAVER POND by Karen Klinedinst(Click here for larger view)

INTROSPECTION by Katie Kelleher(Click here for larger view)

Katie Kellehe says of her work, "I was once rescued from the water by a lifeguard when I was not drowning.

Apparently, my desperate flails and frantic kicks were anything but pretty, and were likely even painful to fall eyes upon.

Needless to say, swimming was not my forte. Growing up in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast, this was a great misfortune.

However, I eventually found a place I could belong upon transferring to Brevard College in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, then moved into the nearby thriving arts scene of the city of Asheville once graduating with a degree in Exercise Science and Physiology.

Soon after, I picked up a pencil and have since never fully put it down. Drawing became my form of imagining, seeking, creating and sharing something beautiful.
I then began to explore other mediums, and found a niche in composing art of almost entirely natural, discarded, recycled or repurposed materials.

These components are often salvaged from scrap piles, roadsides, alleyways, or other overlooked or forgotten places fallen through the cracks of our world and in which I probably should not so openly admit to spending my spare time.

These items keep an inner history of former lives, from the wood that stood as a barn for over a century, to the hinges from Habitat for Humanity which were stripped away to open new doorways for families, to the rusted pieces of decomposing invention and industry back to their true natural states.

Much of my photographic expeditions and subject matter reflect the same theme.
In hopes of using this beauty to improve lives in both moments and through charity, I now give the option to any buyer of my artwork to choose a preferred charity or non-profit which a portion of the proceeds will support. Photo-essays and exhibition opening events have been turned into opportunities for bringing awareness to local causes and raising funds to give inertia to social change.

I aspire to continue to use the beauty I find, create, and share in as a tool to change the world around us."

Katie Kelleher is a freelance artist and photographer living in Asheville, North Carolina.

She spends much of her time searching dumpsters, scrap piles and alleyways for scenes or materials with the potential to become something beautiful. She tends to casually overlook this mention when first meeting people.

Her work has been featured in publications and galleries internationally. When not creating art, she can usually be found hiking with her dog Journey, rock climbing in the serene surrounding mountains, playing soccer, or wondering why she sounds so much more interesting on paper.

Lee Musgrave says of her work, "Whether smooth, coarse or anywhere in between tree bark, texture is alluring to look at, captivating to contemplate and irresistible to touch … and makes fascinating visual abstractions.

As a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship recipient my abstract photography has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions including at the 2016 Berlin Foto Biennale; featured in the inaugural issue of Create Magazine; and in the 2017 Anniversary edition of LandEscape Art Review in an extensive interview with many photographs about my ‘taking advantage of chance’ approach to creating art."

A common theme found throughout Niki Sylvia’s artistic work in multiple mediums, is organic lines and shapes found by observing materials and textures, not forcing complete control over the medium but allowing expression from the material itself, often organically mirroring forms found in nature and science.

Her fascination with photographing the world around her began at art school in Boston, Massachusetts where she primarily focused on print design, but needed to balance out the structure and rules of graphic design with the freedom of abstract photography and painting.

Oliver Raschka travels by train every day. So tracks and train facilities are very familiar to him and while on the platform, he enjoys the beauty of the surrounding infrastructure.

Overhead cables and power systems in particular offer plenty of interpretations of daily life – a couple at a bar, a hunting cat, letters and so on. The abstract character of the powerlines, and the patterns they create make you think of the Rorschach inkblot test.

The overall topic of the photographic work of Oliver Raschka is the disclosure of urban structures and patterns lying beneath of our perception, using a camera and hard black and white contrasts as stylistic devices.

The images present new perspectives by highlighting the hidden beauty of a technical infrastructure which is purely committed to securing the functioning of the overall system.

Therefore, 'Patterns of Power' is an example of how urban traces can be found and interpreted. The images may reengage people, not only with the hidden beauty of their personal environment but also with the meaning of objects in public spaces. With this in mind, people can get involved in the composition which enables them to have an intensive engagement with their locality.

'Patterns of Power' is an ongoing project which contains over 30 images so far. Places are Stuttgart, Mannheim, Berlin (all Germany) and Edinburgh (Scotland).

Oliver Raschka is an emerging photographer living in Stuttgart, Germany.

He studied industrial economics and economic psychology. He was educated by the Lichtblick School (Cologne, Germany). The overall topic of his artist work is the disclosure of urban structures and patterns lying beneath human perception using unusual perspectives and hard black and white contrasts as stylistic devices.

His works have been widely published in group and solo exhibitions and in international and national magazines, and has won several prizes.

HE TOOK HER PETAL AND GAINED A FEATHER by Paula Rae Gibson(Click here for larger view)

GLIMPSE by Robert Canaga(Click here for larger view)

Robert Canaga says of his work, "Last year we took a trip to Ireland. The first day, while my wife was at work, I went to one of my all-time favorite museums, the National Gallery only to find HUGE storm damage had closed all but two galleries.

Sean Scully was having a small show in the rotating gallery space they had set up. I had seen his work of and on over the years but never thought much of it.

This time I had a viseral reaction to it. I disliked it on many levels: dead colors, sameness of mark, quaility of the paint. I walked through 5 times making sure I was not just in a bad mood but the looks on the guards faces told me they agreed.

In the next room were photos he had done of the rock fences and walls on Aran Island. These were the beginnings of his paintings and they impressed me.

We left the east and drove up to Sligo for a few days, then down to Glin on the Shannon River. I took pictures of wall, fences, burial mounds, city walls, and just about anything made of rocks all along the way. On a day trip to Limerick I saw a wall made of white rock with brick where a fireplace had been.

The shape and color reminded me of a figure. When I got home I went through some of my recent files and found photos of models and began inserting them in to the rock photos.

The result pleased me so I hired models and finished the series you see here. I hope you enjoy them.
All work is in an edition of 50."

'Layers of Time: Longview Farm Memories' is an exhibition by Ron Anderson that features photographs of Longview Farm, built in 1914 by Kansas City lumber baron R.A. Long and known as “The World’s Most Beautiful Farm.”

By blending historical and contemporary photos, through the use of various printing techniques, Anderson’s images immerse the viewer in the multi-layered, non-linear concepts of time, memory, and history. The photographs build a bridge from past to present, and resurrect the aura of a significant Kansas City landmark.

Ron Anderson is a photographic artist whose work is exhibited nationally and has been chosen to be included in numerous exhibitions by people such as Jerry Saltz, senior critic for New York Magazine, Antonia Bostrom, former Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Jim Casper from LensCulture.

Sonia Melnikova-Raich was trained and worked as an architect and artist in Moscow, Russia, and has been living in San Francisco since 1987.

When she turned to photography, her schooling in painting and design remained noticeably present in her works.

Rather than treating a photograph as an illusionary “window” into a three-dimensional world, she approaches it as a canvas with its own material presence and brings the viewer’s attention to the physical surface of the photograph, geometry and structure of the composition, and pictorial aspects.

As to her objects, she looks for grace, poetry and mystique in the most common of things. In that respect she feels strong affinity with the Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, with its preference for muted colors and reverence for the subtle beauty in old and simple things.

She exhibits locally and nationally and has been a finalist and winner in many competitions, juried, among others, by Phil Linhares, Chief Curator of Art, The Oakland Museum of California, Rene de Guzman, Senior Curator of Art, Oakland Museum of California, Linda Connor, Professor of Photography, San Francisco Art Institute, and Kenneth Baker, Art Critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.

She had several solo exhibits and has been featured in professional art and photography journals.